Samsung and Google unveil Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0

Google and Samsung have announced the Galaxy Nexus smartphone - the first to use the latest version of the Android operating system. Android 4.0 (also known as Ice Cream Sandwich) features a series of enhancements for photographers, including support for what the companies are claiming is a 'zero shutter lag exposure.' The camera app included in the software also supports digitally stabilized zoom, single-motion panorama shooting and the ability to take HD snapshots as video is being shot. Ice Cream Sandwich also features a redesigned album layout and a photo editor, allowing cropping, rotation and simple image corrections. The Galaxy Nexus handset has a 1280x720 screen and 5MP camera capable of using Android 4.0's 'zero shutter lag' feature.

“Samsung and Google have closely collaborated to push the mobile experience forward. We are pleased to deliver the best Android smartphone experience for customers with GALAXY Nexus. We will continue to move forward with Android to provide the compelling consumer experience in mobile world,” said JK Shin, President and Head of Samsung’s Mobile Communications Business.

“Ice Cream Sandwich demonstrates the Android platform’s continued innovation with one release that works on phones and tablets and everything in between. Features like Android Beam and Face Unlock show the innovative work our team is doing, and GALAXY Nexus showcases the power behind Ice Cream Sandwich,” said Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile for Google.

The first smartphone to feature Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich

Ice Cream Sandwich brings an entirely new look and feel to Android. It has a redesigned user interface with improved multi-tasking, notifications, Wi-Fi hotspot, NFC support and a full web browsing experience.GALAXY Nexus features software navigation buttons, a first for Android smartphones. The lock screen, home screen, phone app, and everything in between has been rethought and redesigned to make Android simple, beautiful, and useful.

Ice Cream Sandwich also features a new People app, which lets you, browse friends, family, and coworkers, see their photos in high-resolution, and check their latest status updates from Google+ and other social networks. GALAXY Nexus features a redesigned camera which introduces panorama mode, 1080p video capture, zero-shutter lag, and effects like silly faces and background replacement.

GALAXY Nexus is also connected to the cloud, keeping your email, contacts, and all other data synced across your devices. You have access to more than 300,000 apps and games from Android Market™, or, in certain countries, you can buy and read books, or rent movies and stream them instantly from your phone. In the U.S., you can also upload your music to the cloud with Music Beta by Google and listen anywhere, even when offline.

GALAXY Nexus is designed to provide a “pure Google,” experience, and with it, you will be the first to receive software upgrades and new applications as they become available. It also features a number of Google Mobile services, including: Android Market, Gmail™, Google Maps™ 5.0 with 3D maps and turn-by-turn navigation, Google Earth™, Movie Studio, YouTube™, syncing with Google Calendar™, and a redesigned Google+ app.

Best-in-class hardware meets the most advanced software

GALAXY Nexus is the first smartphone to feature a 4.65’’ display with a market-leading resolution of 720p (1280x720), ensuring you can enjoy GALAXY Nexus’ immersive entertainment capabilities and fast web browsing in superior clarity.

Succeeding the original Contour Display of Nexus S, GALAXY Nexus comes with a rounded shape that fits perfectly within your palm or to your face for phone calling. Hyper-skin backing on the battery cover improves the ergonomic feel of the device and makes the phone slip-resistant. At just 8.94mm thick, with a minimal 4.29mm bezel, GALAXY Nexus provides superb portability alongside an expansive screen.

GALAXY Nexus also features an ultra-fast 1.2GHz dual core processor, providing superior power and speed, ensuring you can take full advantage of GALAXY Nexus’ enhanced multitasking capabilities with ease, or enjoy the large, vivid display to its full capacity with high-definition gaming or video streaming. LTE or HSPA+ connectivity combined with a dual core processor delivers high-speed web browsing which ensures you always have the web at your fingertips, wherever you are.

GALAXY Nexus will be available in the U.S., Europe, and Asia beginning in November and gradually rolled out to other global markets.

Steve Jobs said "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."Jobs left the words in anger in his biography.

So, how can we still buy the stolen product " Android "! No! At lease I can't.

You guys know very little about Jobs, Apple, NextSTEP ... Get your asses on Wikipedia before you diss Jobs. Apple Newton platform preceded Palm by a decade. GUI is an invention and Apple was the first one with a product on the market. And while Jobs did not invent GUI (Xerox did), Edison did not invent lightbulb, but his design was used for over 100 years.

Let's not talk ill of the dead, but the fact is, there is very little if anything that Jobbs invented. PDAs were invented by Psion, PCs had been in existence long before Apple existed and Apple did not invent mobile phones, or mobile phones with other applications in them. However let's give credit where credit is due, what he was a genius at was making products better and more desirable then the competition, and knowing when to introduce them.

I think the SuperAMOLED screens in the Samsung smart phones put them head and shoulders above all other smart phone manufacturers, especially for viewing pictures and reading text. If you have never seen the screens, go get a demo. You'll be amazed. I'm not so interested in the smart phone form factor, but the Galaxy 7.7 that Samsung will be releasing soon with the same SAMOLED screen is going to be REALLY interesting to photographers.

But the down side about all of these phones is people never talk about call quality anymore, which means that call quality will continue to progress in it's path to irritatingly awful. This is why I owned and rejected a high end smart "phone". I've decided that they may be smart, but they aren't a phone. For me, a tablet and a flip phone with good call quality are the best combination of technologies.

I have looked at a SA screen on the Samsung Nexus S & compared it to my eventual purchase of a HTC DHD. The non SA screen of the HTC DHD (older technology too) WAS FAR SUPERIOR FOR MY NEEDS. The non SA screen of the HTC DHD offered more accurate colors, a better tonal range & better resolution. I am a pro photographer with 25+ years experience & am very tech literate, so I knew what I was looking at & for. The HTC DHD was for my eyes as a photographer MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH better than the SuperAmoled of the Nexus S. Maybe to kids or folks looking for contrasty eye candy, it would be the opposite view?

Why any photographer would vouch for AMOLED is beyond my means of comprehension. Either that, or it's completely absurd.

The AMOLED technology has always overly saturated colors, thus making it the arch enemy of all artistic content creators. Why would you advocate a product that exaggerates your work, beyond how you intended it to be viewed?

What a photographer should always value the most is pixel density and color accuracy, which is precisely what the iPhone 4/4S' screen is the best at. One thing to note about the Galaxy Nexus is that this is the first debut of the "Super AMOLED Plus" display. Initial reviews have already noted that it suffers from reduced sharpness (despite being 720P) and even worse color saturation.

Hey, Samsung ! Don't you think it's time to stop sniffing apple's ass and come up with something new? Apple will always be ahead because it does it first and it does it right. Please stop replicating iphone. Thanks!

Wow. I sense some projecting here. If you read another report on this, Apple 4s has borrowed from the Android smart phones too. Even Apple gave in to multitasking that Android used first. Amazing how some of the Apple fanboy drama queen get emotional over Apple. Apple isn't paying you anything.

So funny how people bicker over iOS/android who's on first nonsense when Palm and others were clearly in the smartphone market first.

@abolit: does iphone 4s include face recognition unlock (which sounds awesome!)? true multitasking? And how bout the new ios feature of making the sandbox memory temporary so offline content may not be available when you want it most... genius.

Samsung never contributed anything to the world. It acquired bunch of patents through outsourcing deals ... from microwaves to telecom technology. Technologies based on research at western universities. Now Samsung is throwing it's weight around Biotech industry ... next thing you know fandroids will be saying how Samsung invented cure for cancer. And lets not forget how does Samsung treat their suppliers in Korea. I still wonder why does google keep partnering with Samsung?

Frankly if this was a Motorola-Google phone I'd seriously consider it.

Regarding sandboxing and iOS5 cleanup... It can be hazardous to your data: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=busav&id=news/bav/2011/10/31/07.xml&headline=iPad%20Upgrade%20Causing%20Data%20To%20Disappear

Actually I'm far more interestied in the phones on cameras than the majority of digital cameras. i suspect there are few DPR followers that are in the market for non-prosumer point and click wheras I'd guess virtually everyone has a mobile.

If dpr insists on these articles of smartphones with "cameras" then we might as well feature video cams that take hd stills, binoculars that take photos, spy pens, trophy cam trail cameras, and everything else out there with a photo lens.

Cameras on these high-end phones are better/compete with many of the early digital cameras reviewed on this sight. So, I say good for dpr for including this category. At some point, you will not have standalone point&shoots, as they will be replaced by superior/comparable phone cameras.

Point taken, but I beg to differ. While I can easily accept that smartphones are the dominating the population of candid/street photos out there, it is in my opinion that it is not yet ready for this caliber of a review site. Please tell me, if I am a little obtuse, what could you review from this camera on this phone? Perhaps then, if we were to proceed with trends, should we start including all the apps that make smartphone photos possible? Should we include every smartphone coming out with a camera from here on out? While I wholeheartedly appreciate the advancement of smartphones and its photo capabilities, here on this review site, I can only see it as an announcement. But I guess who am I to go against the tides of technology. If you guys believe its ready for prime time, then so be it.

As a 25+ yr Pro photographer, I use my Android HTC DHD phone camera A LOT, so I appreciate the reviews by DPR, as cell phone review sites don't look at these devices from a photographer's viewpoint. I only wish that my cell phone camera had more manual controls & better image processing apps without the gimmicky effects. I am going to look into app design for pro photographer functions. All of these devices are tools that help me as a pro do my job(s).

Iphone is made in China. its picture iq is very poor. Last week I was out with my friend who has iphone and me with ss2 took photos in the golf course. When I emailed him my photos he siad these were 100 times better than his iphone photos.Most people buy i[phone just for the name. SS2 is much better all round. I am looking forwared to new offering from Samsung

If the Android operating system enables this type of hardware control, will we see low-end and consumer level manufacturers adopt it for their point-and-shoot cameras? Doing so might well give their more expensive competitors a run for their money. I'd love to have a camera that could easily broadcast images (as opposed to a phone that can take photos).

I do want to hear about camera phone latest developments etc on DPR, but they'll never have any zoom lenses will they? So I still need 3 cameras - phone, DSLR, zoom P&S. The phone camera will always be with me so it has its place in my world, it's just so handy for showing things to friends/family.

1. my new iPhone 4S takes a better picture than my first digital camera. hands down even at high ISO. plus i can now edit, send or post it online without having to go back to my computer.

2. smartphone makes are going to add features that push regular camera makes. how long before we see cameras with better screens, more features or the ability to post images with wifi or even cell service?

3. most important, if you think photography is art then consider our future artists. these are the kids with smartphones. if this website is going to cover the art of photography then it needs to cover the tools actually being used and not the tools we think should be used.

4. the camera you have with you will always take a better pic than the camera you left at home. sorry, but my d7000 just looks too lumpy in my back pocket and ruins the lines of my pants ;)

Why shouldn't we complain? It's a change I have no interest in adapting to. DPreview is supposed to be a site for enthusiasts, not soccer moms/dads. Let them go to their own site. If they want to use a smartphone or whatever, fine, but that's not me & I'm only interested in what {I} like and other enthusiasts like. I have no interest in what the soccer moms-dads like.

I don't see what smartphone photography has to do with soccer moms-dads. Many pros like Chase Jarvis, Jim Goldstein, Zack Arias, and others have been at it for years. Didn't you get the memo? Being an enthusiast should not stop you from waking up and smelling the coffee!

On one hand I'm relieved that at least the Apple bias is gone, if they're going to cover the iPhone 4S it's only fair they cover this, so fine there. But again, even if smartphone cameras are becoming the new point & shoot, I still don't agree with DPreview making a big deal of smartphone cameras. Yes a smartphone is always with you, but certainly something like a Nikon J1 or Olympus "Pen Mini" is hardly humongous, and far superior. (And with an Eye-Fi memory card, you can still publish "live on the scene.")

As others have also said, I prefer DPreview stick with REAL cameras & focus on issues & equipment of interest to enthusiasts, not soccer moms/dads who wouldn't know an f-stop from a box of baby wipes & who consider something as simple as resizing a photo for the web a "job for computer nerds." They have CNet and Kodak sites to go to if they wish.

Yes, yes, but my most important question has not been answered. Does Android 4.0, with USB hosting, mean that I can plug my camera into my Droid and xfer images between them? I really, really want to be able to xfer images from my X100 to my droid, and upload them to an online server.

Considering Samsung's history of bullying suppliers (domestic and foreign) and opportunistic technology acquisitions (read "theft") not just in telecom and no respect for IP of design ... To me it is the ultimate in corporate scum.

leave it to tech companies to figure out no shutter lag in thin phones before camera companies do in thick point and shoots that are made for photography. the photographer's new best friend, smart phones (as far as innovation and real progress goes)

At least this is a camera forum and this devie has a camera in it. I think DPReview running this report is interesting as counterbalance after all of the worldwide press that the iPhone 4S received on major news outlets.

Why do ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, etc. always report so extensively about the release of a new Apple cell phone? (Or a lost prototype for that matter.) Are they in co-hoots with Apple?

Yes it must be earth shattering news about every new Apple cell phone that justifies such coverage. I think Apple is #2 in market cap. Does that make them the largest company in the world? Other companies have more sales, profits and employees. E.g. Microsoft has higher sales, higher income, and more employees than Apple.

I do think it is reasonable for DPReview to review the cameras in cell phones now that they have become better quality, more feature rich, and more useful. The phone in the HTC Amaze has some features that I was not aware of until after I bought it and started exploring it. Other sites that review cell phones don't really review the cameras in any kind of depth. Whereas this would be easy and logical for DPReview to do.

Wrong! To be honest with you, it doesn't feel right to argue Apple vs Microsoft in a photography site.AAPL vs MSFT:More profit and more revenue. However, less number of employees. Which is a good thing as it's more $$/employee

I'm not arguing Apple vs. Microsoft. There are other companies that are more profitable than AAPL or have higher sales figures or more employees. Thus are "larger."

But specific to those two companies, AAPL sells a lot of hardware and subcontracts manufacturing of most if not all of those products overseas so it doesn't need as many employees as a company that primarily does software. AAPL had about $65B in sales last year and made about $14B in profit. MSFT had about $70B in sales last year and about $23B in profit. So MSFT is the more efficient company. FYI I own AAPL stock and no MSFT stock.

While we can't expect a camera phone to replace a good camera, they have been improving and can be quite useful at times. I just got an HTC Amaze and it has no shutter lag and 8 meg sensor, 1080p, various convenience functions and scenes as well as somewhat "manual" control. It has dedicated buttons to turn on and shoot the stills and video.

A friend of mine and I were playing with it yesterday and after looking at the images on my computer he said, "Those look better than images from the $25,000 Kodak DCS 460 that I used to use."

So while not as versatile as a DSLR, and the results can be noisy at 50-100%, I bet I could shoot some of my commercial assignments that are intended only for web use, and nobody would question the image quality.

@Dannyboy292: taking 'perfect' pictures with an SLR is so last century, nowadays you do it with your phone or entertainment device like an Android phone or an iPhone. The thing is to take pictures of events you attend or witness and share a photograph with your 'friends', real or virtual. Their hobby is not 'taking pictures', but something else, dancing, partying, whatever. The new phone, that also can film, take pictures and communicate via internet, are there to aid people in doing this.You are right, the quality of the pictures is hopeless, but getting better. If you want total control over the process, you need an dedicated camera, not something that doubles as a phone, although when you're in creative photography....

People that use phones as cameras are funny, the photos are almost always pixelated, blurry,noisy ,unprocessable, uncropable ect...do your self a favor and at least use a good little point and shoot, at least you can crop and mabey even print a photo to hang up on you wall.

I was in Madrid (Spain) without my SLR but with my Galaxy S2 and made great pictures that challenges my SLR. You need a lot of light and I mean a lot of. Under low light the very small sensor is too noisy.

I have an iPhone and I find the photo quality awful at best compared to even a point and shoot camera which I might add you can put. Wifi card and and also upload your better than phone photos to say facebook..oooh and for the person that said he got better photos from his phone where is dslr would struggle to get the photo, I think you just cant use your dslr...and dslr is 100 time more capable of taking any photo than a camera phone

just because they're not replacing point and shoots doesn't mean they don't have a place in photography. smartphones are becoming viable, high quality point and shoots for a lot of situations for a lot of people. thus, it appears on DPR news page. at least it brings a bit of tech and innovation to the rather sluggish and stagnant camera industry.

Some people find this stuff annoying because we get this info from everywhere else, and having 50 sources proclaiming things at the same time gets annoying.

But if they're going to post this crap, they need to post all this crap. Just when the new iPhone comes out is silly. Most of us don't use them, and you don't buy a phone for the camera... or do you? Maybe DPreview should do serious phone camera comparison tests ;)

Why no details on the sensor and lens design? Samsung has some good lenses and decent sensors in their NX and EX lines... why not use that knowhow here? (since Apple can't brag about their P&S and CSC systems yet...)

5Mp: good news, no racing up the Mpix ladder. Similar to Canon's 1DX, a reasonable Mpix target for the intended use: best screens today are 2-4Mpix, and 5 clean Mpix could print beyond letter format. The 5Mp also educates the market asking "Why not 12-20Mpix?"... Eventually they'd learn about noise, DR, ISO.

1280x720: Highest res of any phone; competes in dpi w/ the Retina Display, and beats it (AMOLED vs. IPS) on blacks and power.

Message to DPreview - guys, as the phone cameras have improved quite a lot - would you consider to make some kind of short reviews that could address the ability of the phones to take photos (not full phone reviews of course). And maybe even taking the your studio shots? Would be really interesting.

I am glad to hear that. My contract is going to expire in a couple of months and camera quality is going to be a large factor in deciding if an upgrade is worthwhile and if it is what phone I will select. A phone will not replace my compact or SLR but it is often the only camera I have.

I would suggest those of you not interested in knowing the capabilities of cameras in phones take the same approach I do for any piece of gear over $2000. Skip reading the review. Just because you are not interested does not mean you speak for everybody else.

I think the larger screen is a great feature. It's almost like a 'mini-tablet'. However, I do feel that the 5MP camera will be a little bit behind the times when compared to the competition, in particular the iPhone 4S.

I agree, the 8MPx sensor on Galaxy S2 is excellent I got excellent pictures with it and I use every day to support diagnostic through microscope, and first time I really want a higher MPx sensor (10 or 12). I think Samsung could use one of them on the next Galaxy S3

This phone doesn't compete with the iPhone 4S (I would get it instead of an iPhone but actually this is a much cheaper model). It is mentioned here because it's the first phone to get the new Android 4 (which I believe will kill the iPhone).

It's true, the first camera maker to produce a true "smart camera" will likely sell a lot of them if the price is right. I predict Samsung will be the first. It wouldn't need phone capability, but wireless and touchscreen with apps, combined with decent lens and a shutter button that doesn't make you jiggle the camera when you take a shot... The iCamera.

The X10 form factor is great for taking pictures, but it's far from ideal for a phone, let alone how goofy one would look holding such a camera to his or her face. A simple BT headphone could solve this nicely.

The Nokia N8 was the very first (and only) camera-phone to have decent IQ, because of the large sensor (for a compact).I would really like to see more large sensor phones.... I can live with a thick shell, or a big protruding bulge for the lens, as long as it gives me the ability to leave my S95 at home.Don't need zoom, really, just a fixed 35mm equivalent, make it f/1.4, and I'm good to go.

This post should include the sensor size, lens FL and aperture, and if you can do manual stuff (exposure compensation, noise reduction level, shoot raw, etc).None of that is mentioned, so this "news" is rather pointless for photogs.

I couldn't care less if it is 5 mp or 50 mp. What aperture does it have and is the "zoom" optical or digital.

Apple is so good at advertising their products. You never have to ask "so what is great about this new phone because they blast it out to everyone". Samsung and Google give you little hints about what it might have but it really just confuses the customer in the end.

Wow, since when does dpr report on cell phones? Especially the new super-high-end GN is a little disappointment camera-wise: only 5MP and no camera button. I know, 12MP isn't necessary (even if Nokia showed with the N8 it can be done well) but 5 is not a lot today. And the Galaxs S II has a very good 8MP sensor. And no real flash either....So photography-wise I'm not so thrilled, all the rest is tops, but should not be relevant on this page.

5MP is more than enough. In fact 1.3MP is more than enough to share images on Facebook and even print 4x6. If I was going to make a poster, I wouldn't be using my phone in the first place since I have a real camera for that kind of work. If cameraphones with new BSI sensors were only 1.3MP, they'd have ISO performance on par with DSLRs and that would be awesome for image quality!

All stories are there because we believe they'll be of interest to our readers. Given the popularity of mobile photography, the launch of a new version of Android with enhanced photographic features is news.

@GeorgeZ, @seta666Actually it is about photography. Maybe it's sad, maybe people should respect this art more but that's the way it is.This may sound unbelievable but the number 1 camera on Flickr, in front of Nikon D90 and Canon EOS 5D Mark II is a camera phone (sadly not a very good one, Apple iPhone 4). People are using phones to take (and share) pictures more than real cameras. I think this is a bad thing but it's a fact.BTW, if somebody is paying them it's surely Apple and they announce this just to hide that. But it may not be like that.

Anybody ever hear the phrase "the best camera is the one you have on you"? The IQ from this camera isn't the best there is but its good for social media, but the big deal is that it takes shots near instantly so you never miss anything. The time it took to load up a cell phone camera app and take a picture was a huge barrier to me using it.

@R Buttler "the news section is not for sale"? Oh really. Maybe not officially, but you can go back and count on how many times NIK software got featured in your news section, and then count how many times other software companies that offer plug in filters have made it in the news section here in the same amount of time.

Some software developers are proactive in sending out information, others aren't. We don't have the resources to go hunting down new releases of small plug-ins every day, so we feature those that send us press releases. I can categorically state that we do not nor would we ever, accept payment of any kind in return for running a news story.

Read an article on line today in Professional Photography magazine about a wedding photographer that shot a wedding using an iPhone! I put a link up on Flickr Wedding photography group regarding the story. So it's coming the demise of DSLR. No no I'm joking.

Camera on Galaxy S2 is buggy with the red/magenta spot in middle of each image with white scene. And not to forget the heat issue around the camera on back....you could scream...And by far not so impressive as stated.

Feel free to send me lots of hate mail ... but I want to see smartphone camera coverage on DPReview ... I got into photography because of my iPhone ... so whatever phone I'll be using in the future, it has to have a kick-ass camera !!!